Modding the Acer Aspire One – hard drive

In part 1, I showed how to take the Aspire One apart, how to upgrade the RAM, and how to add internal Bluetooth. Today I demonstrate how to replace the SSD with a 1.8″ PATA hard drive and how to reassemble the Aspire One…

The Aspire One SSD features the same ZIF connector found on 1.8″ PATA hard drives, which are small, light, efficient, affordable, plentiful, and somewhat shock resistant – all this while providing more storage and better performance than this particular SSD. Blame the iPod :)

Apparently, there’s just enough space for a thin (5 mm) 1.8″ PATA hard drive under the Aspire One’s motherboard. I happened to have such a hard drive floating around, a 60 GB Samsung HS06THB. It’s a plug-and-play mod – just disconnect the ribbon cable from the SSD and connect it to the hard drive.

In part 3, I’ll be adding internal 3G to the Aspire One. Stay tuned :)

Update: As mentioned in various people’s comments on various other posts that have linked to my mod, thick (8 mm) 1.8″ PATA hard drives also fit!

Also, if you are having problems connecting the existing ribbon cable to the 1.8″ PATA hard drive, try another ribbon cable with a different thickness. If the 1.8″ PATA hard drive is not recognized once connected, try flipping it over (it’s unlikely to be damaged if improperly connected)…

Damn, I already did the 1.8″ Ziff drive, I really can’t wait to see how you are going to add the 3G stuff! and can you please see if you can also add the SATA connector and the extra PCI-E connector? can you have a look to see if it is possible to add those?

@Ramon, I’ve ordered some parts to do a 3G mod using the pads for the missing mini PCIe and SIM holder on the motherboard. I’d like to use the pads for the missing SATA connector to provide eSATA support.

Hello. Love your work. I have problem and need help. I bought a samsung HSO81HA 80GB 1.8 PATA. In short, computer did not recognize drive. May have damaged zif ribbon. Where can I get another one? Do I need zif to lif or just zif cable? Need Help. SOS.

Hi Mark
Did you get your 80GB 1.8 HD to work? I had a Toshiba with LIF but can’t get the One to recognize it. It have ordered some more ZIF cables from ebay. My understanding is that the ZIF/LIF are just different socket types. Would love to get rid of this damn SSD! Thanks.

Finally up and running. New zip to lif cables ordered from ebay came yesterday. Installed new cables and drive was recognized first try… I had a feeling I damaged the original ribbon when forcing into the samsung drive. Anyway, I am greatful to be up and running and the computer is running smooth with a fresh copy of xp home. Going to install linux ubuntu 9.04 since I have a bigger drive now. Thanks again for all your suggestions out there. Without these posts, and tnkgirl of course, I would be in the gutter…lol…

Hey Keith, I had the exact problem as Mark, and had to order some flip cables from eBay as well. I haven’t received them yet (Hong Kong to Canada takes a while). Anyways, I’m sure this is what you’re looking for. Go to eBay and search for zif flip. You’ll find lots. I got the 3 pack 5cm, a 3 pack 10cm, and a 3 pack of original.

The original ones have Blue on both ends, flip have Blue (to the Acer) on one end, and White (to the HD). I hope I’m giving good advice since I didn’t receive mine yet to confirm, but I’m confident that’s the problem with these drives.

I have tried 10cm zif cable and 10cm switch zif cable from eBay – the difference being the normal cable has contacts on same side the switch has contacts on opposite sides. Anyway neither works – disc not recognised and I have damaged original cable.

Hi Mark and TnkGrl,
I am having the same problem with my connector. I was trying to connect the original zif cable from my Acer one to the new hard drive that tnkgrl is using. 60. GB Samsung HS06THB. And yes it was cheaper getting the drive from Ebay. Ok, so my problem is the cord will not fit the drive. I tried to force it in and only the corners of the cord fits. In doing so, I bent the cord too, trying so hard to get it fit. Mark you were able to buy a new zif cable. What cable did you buy exactly. You ordered a zif (zip??? guessing that was a typo) to lif cable. What is the name of the zif cable or brand. I guess I am asking where you got yours I would like to get for there are so many cables and I am not sure what to get. I would like to get my Acer up and running too!! Please help!! Sincerely Keeya

Hello. Keeya. I would reset the cmos(bios) to your motherboard. You will fund battery under the mother board that looks like a watch battery. Take it out carefully without damaging the battery holder. Leave battery out for 5 min. I would than get a new zif to lif ribbon for 1.8 pata drive. Ebay sellers are selling these for samsung and hitachi drives. Again, read the description carefully. You want a zif to lif cable for hitachi or samsung 1.8 pata drive. Once you get the new cable insert it carefully into the motherboard and the opposite side pata drive. If computer does not recognize, try flippon the cable over on the pata drive and try agin. It might take a few tries but shoild work. Resetting the cmos might help so try doing this first than trying the new cables. If you need a cable I can send u one since I have some left. I ordered from ebay and they came from Hong Kong in about a week. Hope this helps.

Hi Mark,
Thank you so much for the speedy answer. I will try this. Good thing the acer one is so cheap. If I totally destroyed maybe i’ll get another with hard drive built in. How much do you want for the cable? You can hit me up at mizkeeya@gmail.com.

For all of you looking for zif to lif cable on e-bay, I bought mine from E-Bay user i88990. These cables work on samsung and hitachi 1.8 pata drives. hope this helps…Again, alot of people having problems and I am sure its with the connection to the pata drive. Please insert the cables carefully without damaging them. Start with 1 end and work towards the opposite side. You should be able to insert ribbon without cutting or sanding. I have a samsung 80gb spinpoint and did not have to cut or sand the ribbon. It took several tries but finally worked. Also, make sure computer is unplugged and then insert ribbon. If nothing when turned on, power off and flip the cable to the pata drive over and power up…again, i had to do this several times and finally worked…

Hello again. I also wanted to mention that I also flashed the bios with the most updated version (found here http://gd.panam.acer.com/home/ )I used 3309…..secondly, I had to reset the bios. In conclusion, one of these steps helped to get my motherboard to recognize the pata drive..(along with new ribbon)not really sure which one worked but i would try all that is mentioned to narrow down cause.. Remember, u do this at your own risk, I suggest reviewing articles online to get an idea of what your doing…its really not that hard and the more you understand the easier the process is…..here is some info I copied online…use it as a guide but might differ depending on your system….

:If the “Clear CMOS” jumpers are not present or not available:

The procedures for clearing a Bios/CMOS without jumpers is essentially the same as those given above when they are present, it just takes a little more effort.

Shut down the computer and disconnect the power plug.

Locate, if possible, the instruction booklet for your motherboard. If you cannot locate the booklet, then user the motherboard references on this site to locate the manufacturer and see if a manual is available there. You may also want to closely examine the motherboard itself.

Now identify where the battery is located on the motherboard. It will be approximately 1/2 inch in diameter.

Normally these batteries are held into place with one or more small clips over the face of the battery. Carefully lift the battery out of its socket and set it aside. Note: Some batteries are actually soldered to the motherboard, so take that into consideration and be careful.

Leave the battery our of the computer for about 20 to 30 minutes and then return it to its socket.

Now plug the power cord back in and restart the computer.

When the computer begins it’s startup (boot) process, tap the DEL, F10 or F1 key, (whichever is appropriate for your computer) to get into the Bios/CMOS setup. If you need more detailed information as to how to get to the Bios/CMOS setup, follow this link. Bios Basics

Once into the Bios/CMOS setup, look for a section or area to set the Bios/CMOS to its default settings. This will return the motherboard to either its basic or optimum settings depending upon the motherboard manufacturers settings. You will then need to verify certain settings, such a CPU and memory as well as hard drive type and size recognition. If you need more information regarding these settings, follow either of these links: For an AMI Bios or for an Award Bios.

After making any final adjustments, save your settings and restart the computer. The Bios password should be gone and the Bios set to its optimum settings.

Dang! Tnkgrl’s got some serious modding mojo! I couldn’t for the life of me get the original ribbon cable to fit! So looking on ebay it is not clear what to buy — there are some zif flip cables that seem like they might work but it’s not obvious. And are 5cm cables long enough? The original cable is about 7.5 cm long.

I am going to buy a One next Monday for my girlfriend and another One for me after that will have this HDD mod and the RAM mod also.

I live in Portugal, so I was worried because I didn’t wanted to give my girlfriend something that could be limited, but she liked it so much and the screen is big enough for web surfing and take to university/work.

With this, I have just a couple of questions>
– How fast is your HDD compared to the stock SSD?
– Is the power consumption bigger?
– Can you point me where to buy exactly the same model as you? I don’t live in the US, and I am sure I will have to find some way to import one or two of those, but I don’t know if the sources I may find will be from good places.
– What would you change in the One?

Well, that it… I think! :)

Thank you very very much for sharing your knowledge and also, for being so cool! ^_^

Yore’ right about it being so slow – I realized that after watching the video again. I will probably go with using the new STEC Mach 4 Compact Flash as a drive. Only 8G (though larger is available , but costs more) – but should be very quick.

I am wondering about the HDD’s performance, too.
It will be faster than the SSD, yes, but does it worth it?
The same 60GB Samsung will cost me about the same as the 45MB/sec 8GB CF cards and I just can’t decide which of the two is the best (for me), as I don’t care enough for the missing storage space.

I already upgrade the memory and im installing the bluetooth now, im buying the hard drive a toshiba 60GB driveand i want to know if is possible to install two hard drives (dont keep in mind space problems), there are other ZIF connector? im reading somehting about eSATA missing connector maybe on it? connect other ZIF or IDE (2,5″ or 1,8″) hard drive on it?
The aspire one 150 have a 2,5″ hard drive, is ZIF too?

The max is 2gb, it registers as 1.5 due to gpu/system allocation. I have a 2gb 667mhz kingston and it works great. You have to remember it is the chipset which ultimately determines the ram and the intel 945 which has beenj in use for years now is locked to 2gb, but it must be pc2-5300. That was a huge problem with MPC transport laptops, I get them all the time off Ebay not working because people tried upgrading with lower speed rsm. Pop in a new stick and I got a nice laptop for 60 dollars plus shipping. (don’t try this at home)

Any idea if Intel 3945abg wireless card is compatible and could replace the crappy Atheros? Heard of Linux nightmare with Atheros setup and thought we could use some Intel help. Now with the introduction of AOA150-1577 in BestBuy there will be a whole lot more WinXP users/modders. Also, is there a mini-PCI wireless card where 802.11 co-exists with bluetooth 2.0 ? This way, there is no need to fork around with soldering gun. Please update us.

I love your video verrrrrry much! I have install the bluetooth to my aspire one and my friends r kissing the ground I’m walking on :), but I have problems locating a 1.8 inch hard disc drive. Is there any way I can use a 2.5 harddisc…via adapter or something?

Great work with the Aspire One. I bought it a few weeks ago and I’m thinking of putting in the PATA drive mod and the 1 gig upgrade like you did. You said you were going to put XP on it… how did that go? I tried putting XP on the 8GB SSD card and it was terrible. To slow to even run properly so please let me know how well it works, or if anyone else on here has experience with the mod please post. Thanks!

hi! i’ve recently upgraded my one’s memory and now i’m thinking to upgrade the slow ssd to a hdd. i can get a 60gb toshiba zif drive but this one is 8mm thick not 5mm. will it fit? and is the ribbon on the picture the original one? thanks!

Great work tnkgrl! Now, where can you find a suitable HD? No Samsung anywhere and Toshiba MK6006GAH wouldn’t work. I ended up breaking the connector on the Toshiba. The existing flex cable would not insert. It was a bad day. Any thoughts anybody?? Thanks

I’m just wondering how you were able to connect the original ZIF cable to the new hard-drive? I’ve tried to replicate your installation however I’m finding that the connector on the HDD is a lot thinner than the ZIF cable/ribbon. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
Andrew.

I tried doing your mod, first time I tried anything like this it was a nice experience.

I was happy to see it turned on. anyway I had two problems that I couldn’t figure out, first the keyboard clips didnt come out once I pressed it in.

Secondly, when I went to install XP it says that the hard drive is not accessible I am guessing this is because the hard drive is bad.
Another possibility is that since I took it out of an IPOD it is in an unknown format.

I also would like to know if it is possible to put in a 2.5 inch drive. The only problem i see is the connection. I tried looking for adapters out there, but i couldn’t find anything, unless i’m looking in the wrong place. Anyone know anything about that?

THIS IS FOR SAHEB,
I found when removing the keyboard, you push the clip back towards the screen and stick the screw driver in and under the keyboard works better.

I know that now but its too late the clip that is supposed to be on the left most side is stuck in and can’t be reached, although the keyboard seems secure with two clips holding it down I feel uneasy about leaving it as it is.

I’d just like to bump Meran’s question. I am trying to do the same thing and I am having issues sticking the ribbon into the zif connector. I have the exact same hard drive, just a smaller capacity. Obviously I am avoiding using any force but I can’t seem to find a lever or switch that widens the entry. There seems to be a black lever just above the zif connector but I can’t move it anywhere (using minimal force of course).

Any help is greatly appreciated.
——
Meran:
Hi Tnkgrl,

I’m just wondering how you were able to connect the original ZIF cable to the new hard-drive? I’ve tried to replicate your installation however I’m finding that the connector on the HDD is a lot thinner than the ZIF cable/ribbon. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
Andrew.

Hey thanks for the great 411 on the acer aspire one.. just tried to do the 1.8 inch drive install.. no good so far.. i have a 30Gb Hitachi travel star.. and when i boot into the bios it does not see anything.. any suggestions? thanks Peter

Like you, the BIOS reports nothing.
I’ve sent one back to the ebayer I bought it off, but it probably wasn’t faulty. I bought an IDE to ZIF adapter, plugged it into my desktop PC, and was able to initialise and format it in Windows.

There just seems to be some incompatibility between this drive and the Acer.

So, it looks like Tnkgrl got lucky with the Samsumg she had lying around. I’m hesitant to go and buy a Toshiba LIF drive (common on ebay) in case I have similar problems.
:(

@Solidus: I had the same problem, the cable is actually pretty durable, I had to use quite a bit of force to get it in, it worked for me. Be careful with the edge of the hard drive. In a failed attempt from the reaction force u may scratch the cable with the sharp side of the drive, in effect you may pull out the pins of the cable, this can be fixed by applying force and pulling back. (Sorry it is hard to explain, it is easier to show how I did it, hope you understand)

yea tried it both ways.. nothing.. maybe i got a bad drive.. is there enough power from the zif cable to support the regular style this drive?? looks perfect but i just wouldn’t do anything.. I ordered a Zif to Ide converter to see if it works.. If not i will copy the current format from the SSD 8GB drive to another 1.8 drive and go from there.. Windows XP SP3 works pretty good.. added the 1 gig of ram and now waiting for a 16GB SDHC card so we will see.. overall pretty nice laptop..

@Peter: Yeah it probably is the Harddrive. The problem with these drives is that you can’t test them to see if they work. And majority of the people selling these drives are selling refurbished or one pulled out of an IPod.

I don’t know what you did but it simply won’t fit and I destroyed the zif connector in the process *tried to shave off the blue part on the top*. I didn’t try excessive force into the HDD, its worth too much compared to the zif ribbon (I presume) to risk that. In short, it simply WON’T fit. Not that connector anyway. I’ll have to fish out a new one on ebay or something.

If someone can provide an exact process of sliding the zif in, it’d be appreciated. I don’t know why this pain in the back process wasn’t described. Its not as easy as it looks.

Very good work! I am waiting for the 3G mod. Is it posible to use the empty and not soldered pci e slot? some components are missing right? it would be perfect if there is a posibility of enabling and disabling 3G so as to save battery. Even the wifi switch if you move to the left on windows xp I have noticed that the OSD says “3G on/off”, of course this works with the board outside of the housing, otherwise you can only move the switch to the right and activates deactivates wifi. Please, when are you going to have ready this mod? Could you please advance something to us?

I am using a Samsung too. I was applying force but it still wouldn’t force in. I figured if I’m going to try and force something, screw up the 1 dollar zif cable and not the 90 dollar hard drive. I ordered a few zif cables off ebay (from HK so it’ll take forever).

I wouldn’t record it, I just need to know the following:

1. Did you flip that black switch before insertion? Was it up or down?
2. Did you align the cable, pins facing down (with respect to the logo and drive info sticker), and force it into that very thin slot?

I tried scouring google for some information on this and even the manual that is on Samsung’s website. I can’t believe there are no “idiot-proof” instructions for this.

Also did you use any tools to get the cable in? I found that when I tried to apply force, the thing would bend or slip.

I added a 1.8 Pata Hdd 20gb but it seems Aspire one is not detecting it ! i put back the ssd and its also not detecting lol ! im not sure where i went wrong yet !
I was wondering there was something on the original ssd cable just something around the cable. what is it ?

@Veneto , you could also just use normal RFID wireless keyboard and mouse setups. It will occupy one of your usb ports.
Although in my opinion a full keyboard and mouse defeats the purpose of a netbook (sub notebook or whatever you wanna call it.)

@Edward try inserting the cable upside down, don’t insert the MB side in the HDD (it doesn’t seem to make a difference, but what I mean is turn the cable upside down and reinsert the same side of the cable upside down).

Got my new cables and I tried forcing it in. It doesn’t seem to go in too far which is what I suspect. However, it didn’t seem to draw any power (it wasn’t recognized in the BIOS. Did you put it pin-side facing the harddrive?

Wow! I am so excited to have stumbled across your fabulous upgrade montage! You are awesome, girl! I just happened to have bought the 2.5HD XP version from WallyWorld and am increasing the hard drive capacity. I had no idea your wonderful tutorials were even here till I Googled for help in opening the case. Thank you, TY, TY!
I’m so encouraged to try to follow along with you. Some questions, if you have time, please?
– What max capacity SODIMM can be recognized? >1GB?
– What MiniPCIe & SIM connectors should I order? (And who will sell just 2?)
– What thickness Kapton tape do you use? (sorry to sound like such the noob, but I am!)
Thanks again for such a great tutorial on what’s already the cutest lil laptop going.
(BTW, I like your new Honda too. Call me a copy cat, but now I’m looking at that too!)
/T

@Solidus
I will try opening the case today to see how I inserted the cable. When I inserted the cable the black lock on the hard drive (for the cable) was a little hard to close.
Try inserting the cable by pressing on each side until you can see about 1~1.5 mm of the blue tape. Also try flipping the cable.

I tested the actual depth and I did get the wire all the way in. I then flipped the cable and it was detected by the computer (I left the case open to do the tests). After putting it all together I was able to boot it up and install WinXP so all seems to be working.

I noticed that having that double-sided padding tape raises the motherboard slightly on the HDD side. It does so enough that the board needs to be screwed down to connect to the battery. I wonder how much stress this will put on it.

Either way, I was able to replicate the work above. Its just tricky. [=

Solidus if you watch the Video again you will notice that tnkgrl pads the disk from what used to hold down the SSD drive, just cut it out and the drive will settle down nicely, personally when I found out that I will have to force the drive down, I didnt trust it. But I guess its up to you. (For anyone else trying the mod, for the 8mm HDD you will have to cut the SSD screw socket.)

Grats on completion of the setup, I was just about to open my laptop up.

@Wayne, I got the parts and installed them – the mini-PCIe card is being recognized, but I’m still working out some kinks with the SIM holder… It turns out there are more parts missing than just the mini-PCIe connector and SIM holder – I plan to have part 3 of the mods published by the end of October!

Nice video. Very informative. Wish I found you before I added 512RAM to mine. Interested in replacing the SSD like you did. Was wondering if you think an 8mm thick drive would fit? There are more of them out there that I found in a quick 5 minute search. Also, do you know if the 6 cell battery will fit on a system that came with a 3 cell? I called acer to ask them and they said the product is still to new for them to have any info like that yet!?! After an answer like that I am not even sure they sell replacement parts like a battery or power cord yet.

I tried using my mic today and I found out that it isn’t working, its giving some scrambled output. I think maybe the sound cable is loose, maybe I didn’t refit it back correctly can anyone check their mic works, I don’t feel like opening it up and finding out its some software issue.

hi this site is great i am thinking of upgraging my acer aspire one but i am a little worried about getting the wrong drive so i was wondering if someone could tell me if the toshiba MK8022GAA 80gb hard drive will fit in ok it is 5mm thick but i am not sure that the connector is correct i think that it is a zif but i dont know weather it is a thick or thin type or if this matters??????

I finally got an 80 gb hdd that fits with new zif ribbon, but it isn’t recognized by the laptop at boot up. Nothing found in the bios. I’ve got a samsung model: HS0-81HA. I’ve formatted in NTFS and activated the drive. It is recognized by other computers I have, but the Acer just can’t see it as a viable hdd. I’ve been working on this project for months and think I’m really close, but just can’t get through this last problem.

I initially got an 8mm thick 40 gb drive, but the zif ribbon wouldn’t connect. Found some zif ribbon that worked online, but didn’t like the bow on the motherboard because of the extra thickness. Got the 5mm thick hdd, but broke the external hdd enclosure during the formatting process. After a new zif to usb connector arrived, and a double check on the format, I can’t get the laptop to even see the hdd.

Gonna try kicking out the SSD and put in a high speed CF card
Chucking in a 16GB tonight.

Actually wanted to use an SD card (lower power consumption) but couln’t find a ZIF2SD adapter.

Also found out a ZIF2SATA with a SATA harddrive works oke. Need to fiddle a bit, and it’s a tight fit. Need to really check the power consumption on the hard drive. Especially Spin up and idle power consumption influence battery capacity.

“One other important note – there are two different types of ZIF
ribbon cables, which differ only in the thickness and color of the
ends. Hitachi ZIF drives, and most adapter boards, take a thicker
cable end which locks into door-type card connectors that roll
toward the card edge. This end is the blue one.

Toshiba ZIF drives, and pretty much all others, take a thinner,
white cable end, and have a different type of cable lock
which rolls down away from the card edge. This is usually an
extraordinarily thin black bar which at first you’d mistake for
part of the connector. Here it is open, and closed – look carefully!”

Does anyone have some idea about getting the motherboard to recognize this newly installed hard drive? I’m using a Samsung HS081HA. It fits properly, the zif ribbon connects to the board and to the hdd right, but during the boot process, there is no hdd recognized.

Great post! Thank you very much for the pictures. If you wouldn’t have posted them I wouldn’t have opened my netbook to insert a hard drive. The change was quite easy to do and now I am able to use my Aspire One like a real notebook. Thanks!

I replaced the wifi card that came with my A150 using an Intel 3945 card. Worked like a champ with Ubuntu 8.04. IT was much better than the hit or miss wireless the original card had. After all what good is a netbook with no net?

Hey there , what your doing is awsome, i live in australia and for the life of me i cant seem to find anywhere to buy the ‘samsung 1.8 inch ‘ hard drive ,,,,, can you please recomend a site ,,, thank you

I accidentally broke my screen. Of you or anyone you know knows of a place to get free replacement screens for aspire one I would be very happy. And when my bonus comes in I will give to that person.
Aak.cowboys@ gmail.com

Actually, if you have a SSD version of acer Aspire One, to tweak the slow SSD, you just need to is (1) format your XP with fat32, not NTFS (2)disable the paging file in XP, (3) upgrade the ram to a total 1.5GB, (4) go to task manager and click “view” tab and update the speed to high. (5)Install ‘Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs’ is the best choice as it is the lite version of WinXP debutted originally by Microsoft’s folks, unlike those done with nlite.

If you don’t know how to disable paging file, do the two things as follows:
(1)
1. Enter System Properties, either by right-clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop and selecting Properties or by doing the same to the My Computer icon in the Start Menu.

2. Once the System Properties window has loaded, click the Advanced tab and then click the Settings button under Performance, as shown in Figure 11-4.
3. Once you are in the performance options, click the Advanced tab again.
4. Click the Change button that is located under the Virtual Memory section.
5. This will load the Virtual Memory screen. Locate and select the No Paging File radio button, as shown in Figure 11-5, under the Paging File Size for Selected Drive section.
6. Click the Set button and then click OK three times and you are finished. After you reboot, your page file will be disabled.

(2)
Go to Start>Run, type in: regedit
Follow this string to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive
Double click DisablePagingExecutive
Set the value to be 1
Restart your computer for this to take affect

That’s all. Afterall, you don’t need to sell your Aspire One. Follow my instructions and you get the rarest lag with your One.

Olivia you do know that “4) go to task manager and click “view” tab and update the speed to high.” makes your computer a little slower nothing noticeable, its just makes the performance chart update faster.

FYI to all….
I recently upgraded my Linux ssd Aspire One using a toshiba hard drive and a 3945abg (after trying to get ubuntu to play nice with the atheros) and thought I’d out in my 2 cents. My battery life was pretty good until I upgraded to the Intel 3945abg. I also dual boot with xp pro and found that if I tweaked the 3945 ‘s “advanced properties” and set it up for max pwr savings as well as lowest xmit pwr, my battery life is back to 2hrs 30 mins (in XP) on a standard battery. Seems to have done wonders.
Haven’t found the tweaks for ubuntu power savings yet.

I’m using the GOS gears (ubuntu 8.04.1 with a fancy ribbon interface) and can say that everything works , including the wifi switch in both linux and win xp using nothing more than the default settings in GOS and the latest wifi drivers from intel. Even the network led works.
The 3d performance is really good in Linux with the export INTEL_BATCH=1 tweak.

Hehe, I tried out this mod today and here I am typing with my new modded One. :) I cut some plastic to make the drive fit even better under the mobo. The drive I have is pretty much same 60GB Samsung like you have, but I think a bit newer model (a bit less than 5mm thick), and it works like a charm! :)

I wonder what causes a bit nasty sounding clicking sound when the drive idles a while? maybe a driver problem? The drive ain’t falty at least, at least I haven’t damaged it and it’s brand new :o

I’m having the same problem with my ipod hard drive. I can’t seem to get an operating system installed on it so that the Aspire One will recognize it. I’ve posted a couple of times on here, but no helpful information yet. If you learn anything, please post here.

There is a problem with APM with certain HDDs (Samsung ain’t the only one). I haven’t found a permanent solution to this problem, only temporary solutions like “hdparm” in linux. The main problem is that the drive unloads its heads repeatedly when idling. That shortens the drives life span dramatically. Any help to solve that problem appreciated :)

I actively follow your Aspire one mod blogs. Can you add a GPS to it? I found a CF card based GPS and did some research but no one had luck so far…Would be a good idea for your next tweaking of aspire one

That was my thought also in the first place, but that wasn’t the problem and yes, I arranged a plenty of room for the drive inside ;) It’s the APM (Advanced Power Management) I mentioned earlier that is causing the clicks. Known issue with some hard drives. Why I know? Because the temporary solutions mentioned here: ( http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_hard_drive_clicking ) are working and stops the clicking. I think if the drive would had been under pressure it’d be dead by now already :)

Well I did the upgrade on mine today and now it won’t do anything. After I put the memory and hard drive in I tested it before I put it all back together and it worked. Then after I put it back together it doesn’t. I don’t get any leds at all. Looks like I’ll have to RMA it and hope they don’t notice I had it apart. In the meantime I’m going go pick up a Lenovo S10 and if they fix the acer I’ll put it on ebay. I hate days like this!

Yeah I took it all back apart, took out the new RAM, put the old drive back in… no luck. I’m trying to RMA it today. In the meantime I purchased a Lenovo S10 and will be selling the One when/if I get it fixed.

I did this hack(1.8 toshiba 30gb hdd “mk3008gal” from ipod video) to my One like two months ago with no problem at all. Then decided to upgrade it with a larger capacity disk(1.8 toshiba 80gb hdd “mk8022gaa” from an ipod clasic) without no luck this time… Hard part is done, as I installed it the same way, but when i try to install the OS(XP), the Bios recognizes it but the OS Setup states that it cant find a disk. I’ve searched and found some people having their disks recognized by the bios but not by XP setup, but no answer to them has ben posted…
Any help will be realy apreciated…

I also have a hs081ha. I don’t understand why it won’t recognize. Saheb says turn the cable upside down, but why? It works fine in my external enclosure. So how does flipping the cable help? Which side do I flip? The one on the mother board or going into the drive itself? My hard drive has an Apple logo but I formatted to NTFS. Is there any other setup needed for the drive to work?

Success! It recognizes now because I “flipped the cable”. I had tried it before but I flipped the wrong side. For some reason when I connect to my external case it goes in one way, but when attaching to the system it goes in the other…but not on the mother board end. The actual hard drive connection to the zif wire needs to be the opposite way. Strange but true. hs081ha is recognized by bios 3109.

I have a Toshiba 80gb(mk8022gaa) disk and it shows in the Bios but i can,t install the os since it wont recognize it…. maybe some drivers are needed but I can’t find any for this disk. I saw some posts on an Asus eePc forums with others having the same problem…

Olivia – turning off all the extraneous journalling and paging options doesn’t make *that* much difference – I’ve been building cut down images for ages [mainly for workplaces with old PCs, etc] so I have a decent idea of what to do, and your list covers 99% of it [you can also use bootvis [google it ;) ] to speed up boot times etc but it’s still annoyingly slow, and having the SSD with the jMicron controller means that it craps itself every time it fills/clears it’s cache.

I have been concerned about getting the right HDD for the AA1 I have [mit +1Gb RAM] and now having read aaaaalllll the way to the bottom of this page, I think an Intel 354930503AGBG11!!1!1LOL Wifi card might be on the order books too so that I don’t have to mess about with NDISWRAPPER on *nix either. Think I’ll ignore the 3G card though, that’s what bluetooth and a good 3G enabled phone are for. Would rather hammer the battery on my Nokia than on the laptop when attempting to kick servers in VMWare Infrastructure from the train/pub/bath etc.

Try installing a SSD instead, result is awesome, even with a (cheaper) MLC-Drive.
Total transfer is slower than SATA-HD, but 0.6ms accesstime is very nice, especially while booting or other access to many small files. (Win7 about 25 seconds from power on until WLAN-Connection established!)

Just tTry it, such a 64GB MLC-SSD is about 100€ in retail-stores.
SLC would be better but still inaffordable, about 300€ / 32GB.

Rob and Saheb:
I too have the Samsung HS081HA, working and all well except that win7 will not let my aao sleep, hibernate works though.. If you can confirm that sleep works then i know for shure it isnt my HDD, and can move on to check if it is my DW1390 or my BT dongle that i soldered onto the motherboard at the same time.

I have the HS081HA like Saheb, and it works although it seems sort of slow. Mac OS X took 3hrs to install.

I had a hard time getting the stock ZIF cable plugged in as it seemed the blue lining of the stock cable was too thick to fit in the connector. Instead of cutting the cable, I just used a little sand paper to make the blue liner thinner. All seems to work fine now.

bwlinux: yes indeed it is a really slow hdd, around 30MB/s read(write i dont remember from when i tried HDtach on winxp), me myself are running Fedora 10 XFCE, Mac OSX and Win7, of all these OS i found that Win7 actually is the fastest one, though i have not installed any antivirus(that would probably suck out 50% of the cpu ;))

Maybe you too uses a DW1390 (since you also are running OSX), do you get sleep under WinXP to work?

I need serious help here. I’ve taken my Acer Aspire One apart (8GB SSD model, not 120GB model). I bought the Toshiba 1.8″ 20GB MK2006GAL drive. Its too big! I had no idea it was too big and the connector is totally different. I thought its supposed to be a PATA/ZIF, but its not compatible.

I need to know what speedy SSD brand/model is compatible with this netbook version with proper connector.

hey tnkgrl, I followed this guide long ago, but some how my 1.8 HDD died on me, buying another 1.8 HDD was really not practical for me with the 2.5′ HDD on the side with 250GB, looks very tasty for some modding, so i did this http://www.theacerguy.com/2009/01/aspire-one-a110-25-sata/ hope you like it!

Thank you, I am hoping to to a bluetooth mod on here, but then I need to get another bluetooth dongle, then i will have both my 5920 and aspire one equipped with bluetooth. but I can’t seem to understand where you have soldered the 5 volts for the bluetooth, can you shine some light for me?

What SSD replacements work and/or improve the acer one? I replaced the 8gb sdhc with 32gb sdhc and am now turning my attention on the inside. I found that intel is supposed to come out with a 16gb version any day now that could be a replacement for the 8gb but have also come across other PATA SSD drives. Would they work? What do I look for in PATA SSD drives for upgrading the ACER ONE. Thanks!

Hey guys/gals i could use some help. I have done the ram and bluetooth upgrade, and am trying to do the HDD swap.

I’m running the latest bios, 3304 and trying to use a toshiba mk3008GAL 30GB drive. Now i had this driving running jusit fine in an external enclosure, and have attempted to use the thinner cable from my enclosure to connect it to the aspire one. My drive will not show up in the bios….i havent bothered to attemp to load windows xp installer, as i’ve read other people can see it in the installer, but the system never boots to the drive because its not recognized in the bios.

Is this an issue with the current bios, or my drive? or do i technically need to be using the zif to lif style connector. I’ve tried flipping the cable every which way, but im sure i have it installed right.

Any advice would be great, i’ve read other people having luck with this same drive.

There are two models available. The A110 which is the SSD version, and the A150 which is fitted with a 2.5″ SATA drive. On the A150 the bottom of the casing is different in that it has a ‘bulge’ to accommodate the hard drive. I have th A110 which is exactly the same as the one in Tnkgrl’s video. (Except mine has a UK keyboard).

@Tommy: I would Advice you respond at the bottom of this thread, I believe He used the original cable that came with the system. Be warned it is a really tight fit. You need to be very careful when squeezing it in. The worst part is that when your done forcing it in, only to find out that you inserted it in the wrong way up. Good luck.

Thus how about installing ur Acer Aspire One without even having to open it, I got it running with a s-ATA 250Gb 7200 16Mb cache 2.5 inch HD. I put this all in a pink vento Asus casing. connected with 2 usb cables on the right side of the device.

It runs fine with 512Mb ram on Vista Ultimate (ofc the 1.5Gb showed here is allways the better. But 512 doesnt bugg.)

Able to run movies (DVD) smooth in a virtual DVD device setup with 4example(daemontools).

Ofcourse you set the SSD to second boot in Bios.

And let it boot with ur USB-HDD which will work fine.

I recommend setting ur (usbHD) as plain default like any other sataHD on another Desktop pc to just hook it up to complete ur S-ata install Vista (like u normal would) (default without adding any drivers ofcourse) after thats done u run a small hack to bypass the BOD ( simply cus Vista wont setup on external drives ) And start the disc connected to ur Acer when you installed the *.inf shown here:

Thats all you need to do to complete ur Vista install on an AcerAspire One ( I had the linux version to try the upgrade on same like the one worked on here.)

ps. Dont forget before you finalize the USB disk & close it that u did pass the point that you installed SP1 & hotfixes and from there, created a restore point with the bypass ‘to make USB-vista boot work on ur PC with the *.inf (copy&paste into a *.inf ofc.) that file I have shown you above.
This to avoid the part were you get stuck on BOD with an update that changed the usb ‘hack’ and can simple redo the inf before you boot or have ur HD allready in the usb casing basically*!?!.. (then restore to previous working will keep ur system just run fine on boot thats ur (F8), if for any reason is my point.)

ps. In the end you can to my opinion turn of windows updates automatically untill you say so!

Also making a complete backup should be done b4 connecting to usb (that is if you want to, I skipped it.)

Ok, got my problem fixed, i would have needed to pickup a LIF to ZIF cable for the toshiba drive, or i took the cheap way and sanded the one end of the cable that was used for the SSD. Works perfect….this netbook is blazing fast by comparison now, i love it…i can even get some decent games to play on it :-)

Also, i opted to use a 60GB toshiba drive, that is 8mm thick….fits just fine, you just have to cut off a couple of the screw standoffs used for the SSD drive, then i secured it in place with some sticky tack…which does a nice job keeping it in place, and reducing noise vibration, can’t hear the drive no matter how hard i try to.

ps. To avoid large filetransfers to be cutoff/discontinued with a [Vista bugg] happening for example large ISO files, I recommend setting the wireless vista32 Atheroz AR5007EG manually on ur AcerAspireOne 110 :

To a [ AR5006X 7.6.0.154 ] that fixes the problem of cannot acces source file through ur wireless network.

This problem didnt occur on winXP drivers (if you use winXP ofc.) this problem occurs only when you have any vistax86 AR5007EG drivers for this device.

And will solve that you can complete large filetransfers, without the cannot acces source file randomly on //..network.

Hi. I’ve found this Samsung M5 160GB 2.5″ PATA 5400RPM 8MB HDD on http://www.ox.lt/lt/product/48931 and i’m wondering could i replace the crapy ssd and put in this hdd? i’m from Lithuania, so sorry for my mistakes if there is any :)

Tried installing a Hitachi 20gb 1.8 hard drive the my aspire one but I get no power to the hard drive. Anyone know if the cable needs to be flipped? where is pin 1 on the board? I see pin on on the hard drive, but I see nothing on the board.

Replacing the hard drive was a tough mod and will totally invalidate your warranty! I found a Toshiba MK3008GAL for an OK price. I disassembled the Aspire One and installed the hard disk. As per tnkgrl, I placed the hard disk where the old SSD was, this required that some parts of the case were cut off to make room. The biggest problem I found was the cable. The Aspire One SSD has a different ZIF socket to the Toshiba ZIF socket. So, first I had to remove the blue strengthener, but then the cable was too thin so I had to add some tape. Then it all seemed to work. I didn’t re-use the ferrite, hopefully this won’t be a problem in the long term. Reassembly was straightforward. Of course, all software needs re-installing.

I was having this problem too – im hoping my HDD hasnt crashed, maybe I’m not using the correct cable as Toshiba apparently uses smaller ones? Worst case senario I will use a flash card with fast write time and sell my HDD on ebay.. Anyone else have this problem?

sorry about my poor english, i upgraded my aspire one with an ipod 80gb 1,8″ hdd.
the bios recognize it but the xp installation says can´t acces to disk and sow an blue screen of death.
i try low level format the drive but i can´t cause an error says password protected, i don´t put any password and the ipod runs ok.

Hi, last time I opened up my AA1 to change the ssd with a 1.8″ hd…I had a friend which owns a 5g ipod which he doesn’t use anymore…I decided to test the drive. It was an hitachi 30gb drive…Unfortunately, the bios doesn’t recognize it. I already inverted, and flipped the cable but still no luck. There was no sign that the drive was spinning at all..I placed back the ssd and it was working fine…Am I missing something? Thanks alot

I ordered the MK3008GAL from ebay but I really cant see how the hell I can make the cable plug in the hdd.
Its a zif drive ok, looks ok but I cant plug in the existing cable. Also since the cable is symmetrical, which is the right way to plug it?

@Flo – I have the exact same problem you do. This is the 3rd hard drive I have tried and I cannot get any of them recognized. The latest is a 60GB Toshiba that I have the ZIF/LIF connector for but the bios won’t post, it just leaves a blank screen but the drive spins up. Anyone solved this?

*Update* I reflashed to every previous bios and tried 2 separate Toshiba HDDs trying every cable arrangement. How the hell did any of you get a Toshiba drive to work in this piece? Please someone help me!!! I have run out of ideas!

Hi all, I just successfully installed a MK2008GAL that I ordered new for 25$ including shipping. The ZIF cable was a tough fit, but I was afraid to modify it in case I needed to revert back to the crappy slow 8Gig SSD it came with. I found the end of the cable which was originally attached to the mother board was stiffer than the end which was originally in the SSD so I switched the ends. I was also surprised that the contacts on the cable needed to face away from the main body of this HDD, that seemed counter intuitive. Anyway, I just lined up one corner of the cable and pushed it in a bit, then worked my way across the rest of the cable until it was barely in across the length of the cable, then I just pushed harder and bit by bit forced it in. I did try to use my thumb to push down on the connector on the HDD to try to keep it from breaking. I worked slowly and walked away when I began to get frustrated. It took about 15 minutes for me to get it seated and then press the thin black bar down to lock it into place (though it was tight enough not to fall out before). The acer runs soo muc better now, no more pauses to write to the drive. I know 20Gigs isn’t much but it is plenty for this little machine with Linux Mint installed. If you are looking for a linux distro I definitely recommend Linux Mint, its powerful, yet really newbie friendly and works great on the acer, though I did have to follow the directions on the ubuntu acer one site to get the wireless working.

you “could” but you will loose your recovery partition. 160GB format to NTFS only gives you about 149GB, and couple more used up for the eRecovery system. it is in your best interest to keep it if you don’t have backup cd’s

I’m really glad that I installed MK2008GAL. Original cable is used to sand out one end to squeeze it into the HDD. It was just a matter of one to one mapping of the zif cable and sanding out and squeezing it. That took 3 days to figure out. Hugh..

Hi Installed a Toshiba 30 gig MK3008GAl but i cant get it to be regognized by the a one 110. What is it i should do to make it work.I think the cables right,it just wont be seen. Bios 3309 i think.
Please help.
Pelleplutt

Pelleplutt : When you open the case, try changing the cable arrangements and turn it on without closing the case until you get it to work. Sometimes when you close the case something goes wrong, like a cable gets crushed or loosened cause of a tight fit it has happened to me a few times.

Lasivian: not sure what you mean by adapter board, are you talking about the built-in card reader, or did you add a ZIF to CF adapter.

Scott,
I think my Acer is a model ZG5, but I’m at work right now. But the Samsung should work with any AA1 that uses a 40 pin ribbion. Make sure pin 1 of the motherboard follows down the edge of the ribbon to pin 1 of the hdd. MB pin 1 is closest to front of the computer. Pin 1 of the Samsung drive is closest to the three brass connectors on the bottom. Pin 40 would be near the two brass connectors on the opposite side. See photo at the top of this thread. The Samsung drive has double sided jaws and can be flipped over if nessesary to get pin 1 lined up with pin 1. The motherboard connector is one sided only so the ribbon must go connection side down.

Thought I would let everyone know that the AA1 units with the .3MP webcam can be self-upgraded in 15mins or less to a 1.3MP webcam. (No Soldering Required) I will be setting up a website with the processes and part numbers to show you how.

There are 19 screws removed to disassemble the Acer Aspire One (I have the XP hard drive version). There are 4 different sizes of screws among the 14. Somewhere we need to document which screw sizes (short, medium & long black) go where (the 4th size is the silver screw under the keyboard on the right side).

Hi, I have successfully replaced old ssd with CF card and everything works OK. But I have problem with reassembling. Those three plastic “things” that should hold the keybord in place (those under F2, F8 and Break keys) wont pop up. They are stick inside and I can’t find the way how to get them to the right position.. Am I doing something wrong? BTW.. i tried to force them from the other side (but gently of course) and that didn’t help either.. I would appreciate any help.. Thanks.

Hi, Very good instructions. I tried the Hitachi C4K60 20gb hard drive and it did not work as others have said, so recommend not to try this hard drive for this task as very strong evidence is not compatible. (I have relegated it to an external hard drive enclosure where it works fine). If anyone got the Hitachi to work would be very interested.
I did get a Samsung HSO82HB 80gb to work no problem but it failed after 2 weeks, which was a worry. A replacement is on its way. When I took out the original 8gb Intel SSD there was an Iron “balun” on the ZIF cable which I removed at the time. Suspecting this may reduce interference or signal spikes I will replace it when I fit the Samsung hard drive to see if that prevents it failing. Has anyone had a Samsung harddrive working for over 6 months without failing?

Great performance improvement mod. Inserting ZIF (HIF!?) cable in 60 GB Samsung HS06THB ($60 on eBay) a bit tight. SSD seems to be a promising technology, but is still in its infancy, ridden with problems.

I got the Hitachi C4K60 20gb to work after all. I got a “flip” zif cable off ebay and it fired up.
this has the exposed wires facing the other way at one end. Certainly could not get it to work with the original ZIF cable that came with the Acer. Works very nice, though not at fast as the Samsung

@Dizwix The files on the SSD are still on the SSD, The files that are one the HDD (Hard Drive), if there are any, are still going to be on it. So if you have an empty Hard Drive logic dictates that you will have to install an OS again whether it be Windows or Linux. Now if you get a hard Drive that already has an OS on it you may not have to install it, but it is always recommended to have a clean install with a hardware change. Hope this helps.

Hi,
I swapped out my SSD with a 60gb Toshiba MK6208GAL drive but its not recognizing it. After numerous tries, i thought i damaged the original cable so i ordered “FPC ribbon cable for Toshiba 1.8″CE(ZIF) HDD” from ebay and when i tried those, it’s still not working.. What should i do? I tried the SSD again with the original cable and it’s working.. I’m out of ideas. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi,
I just recently bought an acer aspire one d250 and after reading your guide on integrating bluetooth I wanted to do the same but I have a slight prob that I wanted to know if you had a solution for so here it is:
I have a broadcom BCM92045NMD BLUETOOTH MODULE from an parted out HP notebook, problem is that the module has an 8-pin connector with cable and the aspire one has a 4-pin connection, my question being is there anything I can do with that or should i just go buy a usb one for easier install?

What you need to do is have the laptop open have and have access to the hard drive and mobo zif port, then keep checking different cable combinations on both sides. Toshiba has a different cable type then the original cable that comes with the Aspire One. Try flipping the cables and try different sides.

@Salty:

I think the BCM92045NMD takes extra power with the extra 4 pins, Its easier and maybe cheaper to buy a new usb bt module. From what I understand it seems you need to buy a different cable to make the device work, and you will also have problems with drivers there is a serial lock on these chips so will need to make the chip believe that you are using a HP and not an Acer.

Hi – With regards to changing the SSD drive in an ACER Aspire One netbook with a 1.8″, 5mm thick HD there are quite litterally dozens of people who have tried and failed, the majority of failures seeming to be when connecting a HD with LIF HD connection and not ZIF eg – the Toshiba GAL HD Series.

I purchased a Toshiba MK3008GAL HD to replace the SSD in my Aspire One which has been checked as working using adapter through a USB Port.
From Ebay I purchased a 10cm ZIF to LIF ribbon cable. The thin ‘White’ taped end of ribbon cable fitted into HD and ‘Blue’ taped’ end into
Aspire One Mobo, but BIOS does not recognize HD. I have tried re-flashing BIOS, removing BIOS battery for 20 minutes, connected ribbon cable in different ways and still no HD BIOS recognition which raises the question as to whether anybody has successfully connected a Toshiba ‘GAL’ series HD with LIF connection to their Aspire; affirmatively, how? Which way up did ribbon cable connect to Mobo and HD?

i also used a toshiba HD (MK6028GAL) with a LIF connector and i recycled the cable that was connected to the SSD. you just have to use sandpaper and reduce the thickness of the blue plastic stuff at the end which connects to the HD. worked excellent for me and bios recognized my HD first time!

hi Jens,
How were you able to get it recognized with original cable? I tried it before but didn’t work. ordered zif to lif cables from ebay for toshiba zif drives but still didn’t work. Did you reset your bios to get it to work?

I have done a few hdd replacements but only the upgrade tyoe never a switch such as the ssd to HDD on the aspire. Will a SAMSUNG HS060HB 1.8″ 60GB ZIF CE PATA 2MB Hard Drive also work? and what is the disadvantage of only a 2mb vs the 8mb?

it was nearly plug and play. after i worked on the cable and made it fit into the lif connector i booted to see if bios recognizes it. and it did. i read somewhere that i can’t damage the hdd by putting the cable in in the wrong way. but that would have required much more forcing than the right way. so it worked without any problems.

i have had more trouble to get the system to add the full size of the drive after i restored the backup i made from the ssd.

If you are installing a Toshiba 1.8″ drive into your Acer Aspire One, such as HD Model MK4007GAL or MK3008GAL or MK6028GAL which all have a LIF ribbon connection point, I would suggest you purchase a ZIF to LIF, 10 cms long ribbon cable from Ebay.

I tried to connect a ZIF/LIF ribbon cable exactly as per photo at start of of this URL -ie- :-

but could not get the HD to be seen by bios; furthermore, the white plastic LIF end of cable would not easily go into HD.

I then examined HD LIF connection socket with magnifying glass and decided I was connecting cable the wrong way round, so I turned hard disk over ie. in such a way that you would be able to partly see HD label in photo and all worked fine, furthermore the LIF cable now slid easily into HD connection socket.

Other than turning HD over, connect exactly as per photo, including folds in ribbon cable; it worked for me, so if you are having trouble, give it a go.

Whether this advice applies only to Toshiba, LIF connecting HD’s I don’t know.

I installed a samsung HS082HB and all seems to works fine, BIOS recognize it BUT when I try to install an OS it crashes and after reboot hdd “disapears” a while (3/4 starts). BIOS is flashed with the last version. Someone has similar problem?. Someone knows why this happens?.

Loads of us had problems with the cable into the 1.8″ ZIF drive. I read an article about installing hard drives in an IPOD and it gave me a clue. Like everyone else I found the SSD cable was too thick for the Samsung Drive. Discovered that some are .35 mm and others are .22. Bought a convertor kit which contained both cables from a UK company. Ordered last Friday very late and it arrived today, Tuesday. Cable goes INTO the end of the ZIF socket on the drive (this is not normal on most ZIF sockets in laptops. I had to turn it over so that the contact side of the cable is the same way up as the circuit board side of the drive. In other words the contacts face towards you as you insert the cable in the drive. This was not the way you naturally expect. Tnkgrls video was brilliant but it might be worth making one showing inserting cables into ZIF 1.8″ drives. Anyway I have re-assembled my Acer Aspire One and the bios picked it up straight away once the cable was the correct way round. The convertor kit that had the cable I needed cost around £6 including delivery and I now have a circuit board which allows me to install an 1.8″ drive in a standard PC for wiping, testing, formatting etc. Hope this helps someone…Now to install Windows 7 trial.

The ZIF/LIF cable for my MK2008GAL arrive today, tried booting, the aspire one can’t detect the 1.8″ HDD. I don’t know what I did wrong… Is the ZIF/LIF cable suppose to go all the way on the HD slot? Mine only goes up to the middle and locks in place when I lock it with the black pastic flap. Is that right?

As with many others here, I did this mod and had trouble with the zif cable. The one in my acer was too thick for the used ipod drive I bought. Found a guy on Ebay who was selling a couple different versions of zif cables and that solved the problem.

My restore disks would not work with this new hard drive – I do not know why. I had to use a copy of xp pro that I had laying around and then run updates for 2 days straight to catch it up to sp3. All in all, it was worth it.

I do wish the video showed the details of the zif cable, though. That would have proven helpful for me.

Hi everybody
This is my third post I don’t mean to flood the thread but if you know why a black screen is all I have when I connect my toshiba Mk008GAL hdd…
I m desperate it has been for a few months that I haven’t use my AA1 because of that.
I need help !!!
Thank you

Hi everybody
Solved all my problems thanks to these comments.
black screen —-> need to flip the ZIF LIF cable
bios don’t recognize toshiba hdd —> do not forget to lift up the tiny black bar on your hdd connector….
Thanks to all of you

Hi All, I ordered the right cable form ebay, it came from China. I had the same trouble with putting the cable in HD the right way. I am useing a scandisk cruzer to try to put a OS on the computer, the bios sees the new Toshiba 60gb and sees the thumb drive I have about two days invested and can not make it happen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hellnano,
I have the same hard drive as you. How did you secure it in the case? What specific adhesive pads did you use, and how many/where did you put them? Only attached to the bottom of the case, on just one side of the drive?
This drive is one of the 5mm thick ones. Anyone else with suggestions? I’d like to get this secured/fit right the first time so I don’t have to disassemble again.
Incidentally, I have one of the adapter cables ordered but it’s coming from Hong Kong and I’m not sure I want to wait… may take the sandpaper approach.
Thanks.

thanks for your videos, they helped me a lot disassembling my Aspire One. However, I’m not so lucky with installing my 1.8″ hard drive, it does not seem to start at all. There is a more detailed description and a few pictures in this board:

I followed hellnano’s instructions and bought cable from EBay for Samsung drive – disk held in with double sided squares. (I killed original cable!- easy to do)

I found on startup Samsung does not always appear in bios – left Aspire bit disassembled to play with it.

However once I got Windows 7 installed – took a couple of attempts all works fine now.

Most problems relate to the type of cable ie needs to be 10cm (I think ZIF/LIF??) and needs careful folding to ensure no pressure on the connection and of course its orientation when cable inserted – see hellnano’s photos – they really explain everything

katakana
I agree with chrisd. I think the cable needs to go into the hd connector farther. I had a similar problem w/mine. I ordered the flip cable from ebay (the chinese version) and received 5 cables. It was fortunate, because I ruined one learning how to insert it. I couldn’t get the cable to go in far enough (bios couldn’t see the hd), so I used needle nose pliers on the second one. I know that sounds rough, but it worked. Hold the tip of the pliers with your fingers of the other hand to guide it straight in – if it slips to the side, it’ll bend the cable. I could actually feel the cable bottom in the connector. The hd powered up, and has been running great since. Wow, what a difference in speed over the SSD. This is now a respectable little box.

I already have the Model: 0902 AOA 110-BW ZG5 with an 80gb drive, but I am wondering if one of the newer 160gb drives would also fit. do you think I could replace the exiting 1.8 PATA drive with a larger capasity in the same space?

I got new cables from eBay, now I can clearly hear the hard disk turning up when booting the computer. However, it is still not recognized by the bios.

Could this be because the drive starts too slow? When I press the power button, I hear the drive beginning to rotate. Five seconds later, the bios shows up, saying there’s no HDD installed. Another five seconds later, I hear a click noise from the hard drive that I’m used to interpret as a “I’m now up and running” from the other Samsung drives I use in two desktop PCs. So this could mean that the bios asks the HDD if it is there, gets no response because the HDD is still starting up and thus thinks there isn’t any HDD installed at all, right?

Well, it was pretty much the same for me. The drive was recognized very few times in the beginning, I checked the cable like 30 or 40 times (really) and, at some point, the disk started getting recognized at every single boot attempt. Just installed Windows 7.

Hi to every one i have a modded 110 with a Samsung 60 gb hdd and 1gb module of ram. When i first make the mode i install win xp sp2 and everything was ok till the time i install the sp3.It worked for a while and then it stopped booting showing only win logo. I tried to reinstall xp sp2,win 7,vista but every time the process stopped after the drivers installation process time while turning to the installation selection menu.I try to make a win xp CD with the chipset drivers with nlite but same thing .Also make hdd test`s with many software’s and its ok. The funny thing is that when using the recovery dvd of acer with linux or ubuntu it works fine. I don`t know if i am doing something wrong please any ideas?

Have you tried running FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from the Windows Recovery Console?

You get the recovery console by booting from a standard XP CD and it’s in there somewhere – but it’s not the ‘repair existing installation’ option – it’s specifically called ‘Recovery Console’.
If you have difficulty finding it, Google for a specific guide to getting into it, it’s been a while since I did it and I use Linux day to day so my memory isn’t so good!

If you are worried about the state of the hard disk [bad sectors etc] you can use CHKDSK /R which will find any dodgy sections andd fix them.

Generally running all three of the above from the recovery console will sort a large chunk of mystery boot problems, although obviously it’s not a golden bullet.

FIXBOOT and FIXMBR *will* cause any Linux/Grub bootloaders to be overwritten however, if that’s relevant to you…certainly is to me!

I’d suggest fiddling in the BIOS – set everything to default, set everything to the lowest, or most basic settings [for example, turn off the option that allows it to use the SD card as an extension of the internal storage, etc. It’s possible it’s one of those things that are causing Windows to break at the setup section; Linux tends to be more flexible in that respect!

Incidentally, if you don’t *need* Windows, have you tried just using Ubuntu? I’ve installed 9.10 32bit desktop edition on my AA1 and everything works rather well…

hi I have a problem with my Acer aspire one
I were update the bios and the power disconnected durring the update!!
now the netbook not work at all, I prees the power and noting happend!!
any help please
do I need to earies the bois and how?

thank you hellnano for respond
I tryed this soluyion it did not word…
my Acer not work at all, even I press the power key but it did not light.
do you think I need to remove the bois from the mother bord and change it?

Hi all, I installed a 60GB ZIF Toshiba HDD1724 4200RPM 2MB in my Aspire one netbook. I had all the problems everyone else has had hooking the old cable to the Zif drive. I ordered some zif-lif cables and it all went together fine, it didn’t run long before the drive failed. When I received a new drive all went well and I decided to use Ubuntu on this computer. I learned how to make a USB thumb drive boot as the netbook does not have a cd player. The computer is now running nice
Mike

Tnkgrl
Thank you; you did an excellent job on showing people on how to upgrade the Acer Aspire One.
Thanks to you I now have a 250GB hard drive with 1.5 GB of RAM in my Acer Aspire One 8.9. The next thing I will add is a 3G connector for added internet connection capability and a blue tooth.

Got a newbie question: once I take out the SSD, how do I boot it to install windows? Will it boot from a USB flash drive or external CD-ROM? How are you getting Windows onto the PATA hard drive? Thanks for any advice.

Im about to do the mod. I only need to upgrade to a 20 gig hard drive and ill use a flash drive if i need more room. I found this on Ebay. Does anyone know if this upgrade would work?
HITACHI TravelStar 20GB 1.8″ Hard Drive ZIF C4K60-20 HD

The Interface is Zero Insertion Force (ZIF/LIF) connector.

The Interface connection of the hard drive is the male ( pin ), not the female ( hole ).
Please let me know b/c im about to buy the hd.

Also as an alternative to the mod could I run xp off an external usb connected harddrive? what one would you all recommend?

from the video it shows some sort of piece of plastic coming from the bottom of the netbook toward the new harddrive. The foam tape would go over that plastic bump to cushion the harddrive when they touch each other.

i’ve been trying to upgrade my acer with 30GB Hitachi 1.8″ hard dive but with no result so far. I’ve been using orignal SSD cable and another ZIF cable which I got with hard drive external usb case but non of them worked. Hard drive has not been detected in bios. Hard drive is OK because it works with external usb case and windows on other laptop detects it. Cables are OK as well because my acer is working now with 8GB SSD card and it’s been detected in bios. Has anyone managed to make this laptop working with a hitachi hard drive? Any ideas? Thanks for your help in advance.

Your instructions, video and pic are the business (awesome as you might say Stateside). I’ve never taken a laptop or a netbook apart and back together again before but I’ve done it now thanks to you.

I got hold of the same model 1.8″ SAMSUNG HS06THB 60GB ZIF PATA 5MM Hard Drive as you used, from ebay and a 1gb ram stick from Crucial.com. After a bit of trouble with the ribbon cable (trashed the original so had to get another 100mm cable off ebay) I finally got it fitted. Used a bit of gaffer tape (duct tape to you) to stick it to the mobo, another bit as padding on that bit of plastic sticking up, and another bit of gaffer tape to hold the ribbon cable down. Put it together and in the bios it’s recognised first time. You made it simple for a noob.

I managed to get the SSD replaced with a Samsung HS06THB 60GB 1.8″ drive. I took me almost two days to get it working though, but I managed to get the netbook to detect the drive, and install windows 7. Plugging the cable into the hard drive was the difficult part. It has to go into the LIF connecter just right, straight, and as deep as one can get it. I used needle nose pliers to force it in (carefully).

Funny thing: Used the netbook for about half a day when suddenly it went dead, and now it doesn’t want to power on again. I’ve seen this happen before if the laptop touches the motherboard (at least I think this is what caused it). I padded the hard drive at both the top and bottom so it doesn’t touch anything before closing the case up, so I don’t think this can be the cause.

Guys please help me!!!
I have got, the SAMSUNG HS082HB but all the cables from e-bay not fit in the slot!!!
Please if someone have the same HDD, tell me what cable i must bay!
Thank’s for your attention!

I would suggest opening the thing again, and running it out of the case. case touching the mobo doesn’t affect it. Static electricity is something that electronics don’t like, although this damage is almost instant. what did you pad with?

I opened the case again, and fiddled around with the cable between the hard drive and the motherboard, and it started working again. Closed the case, and it is still working!

Now I’m stuck with another problem: If I plug in earphones in the earhpone jack the sound is still played through the laptop’s speaker. Maybe I didn’t connect the cable that runs from that part of the computer to the motherboard properly. I’ll open it… again, and have a look.

Yes, that is a good idea, it seems like you are putting too much pressure on some of the cables. I would make sure all the cables are hanging/stuck loosely with sufficient space from the case and Padding.

Done the memory upgrade and just done the HD one as my SSD was USELESS. If you have not witnessed the SSD you cannot imagine how awful it is. Even after tweaking windows it was un-usable. Just starting to load windows 7 and all going well so far. Re: “L-shaped” lug under the motherboard, I found you DO need to remove this with a 5mm HD as otherwise the pressure of it and the sticky-pad either side of the HD will stop the HD spinning up when you screw all the bits back together (fascia and keyboard and back screws)
Thanks tnkgrl… another satisied customer!

My Hard drive just died, too many bad sectors. I failed to notice that I was killing my drive myself. every now and then I would get a clucking sound when I typed. I didn’t give it much thought at the time.

I wish to warn everyone, if you are getting noises as if the fan is being hit when you type then it is possibly the hard drive.

I’ve tried and tried, still no luck. Have the Toshiba MK3008GAL, and it is more than disappointing after waiting almost 2 weeks for the ZIF/LIF cable to come from China, still no joy. I don’t get it, just a black screen. The Hard Drive light is on just as soon as I press the power button. Can not get into BIOS, just a black screen. Anybody, please help. Thanks.

Thanks for your reply, boots into BIOS with no hard drive, no problem. I have tried every way I can think of, and 3 different cables. Worse, I just went and bought a used ipod classic to get the hard drive. This one is 120GB. So if I dont get this working, I should have just gotten an ssd. The 120gb drive doesnt show up at all. Different than the 30, which would black screen with the drive activity light on…and on, stuck. Again, disconnect everything and BIOS is fine.

UPDATE- Success! The 120GB hard drive is recognized! WOw, I was about to give up, wasted money and time. So after fooling with it my conclusions are the used 30 GB I had is no good. The 120 took a couple times to get it seated right, but Windows is installing now. Thank you to every one here who has helped.

Maybe I spoke too soon. Windows 7 setup is saying that it cannot use the drive. It is showing as unallocated space. Exactly, it says:
Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer’s hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk’s controller is enabled in the computer’s BIOS menu.

Sorry to flood the forum, am updating as I go. Now I am back to feeling not so sure about anything. I can get the 120 recognized in BIOS, but cant get anything installed on it. Maybe it has to do with partitions or lack of them, format or being initialized. This drive was taken straight out of a working ipod. Music is on it. Maybe that has something to do with windows setup failing, i don’t know. So I tried the 30 again, ONE time, I saw it in the BIOS. put the keyboard back in where i could install, nothing. Disappeared. Tried again and again, it’s gone. So I remembered someone posting about it not showing up in the BIOS but being in Windows setup. Sure enough, The 30GB is there! I can see the drive in Windows! But guess what? Can’t install to it, just like the 120GB drive. If anybody knows what is going on, Well, WOW!, I would be impressed, thankful, and very freaking HAPPY!

Thank you, I would never have thought of linux. I do knows that it is not the cable because I bought a 3 pack and tried all 3! As soon as I get home tonight I will try formatting with a linux boot cd. Thanks again, will post the results.

Tried gparted with ubuntu. Gave errors. Couldn’t format, nothing. I tried several times, all file systems and size. Nothing matters, Can not write to the disk. Tried Windows DiskPart, couldn’t do anyhing either. I really am thinking it’s because it was used in an ipod. Problem is ipod no longer works for me to put it back in. There is a Windows based program that will convert ipods to Fat32. Problem is, you have to have the working ipod, not just a hard drive. Thanks again for your help.

Hello, Thank you once again. I will try as you say this evening after work. I do know that I tried the correct drive, the size was 111.2GB. I will try again tonight and post the exact error. I believe it just said it was unable to complete the process. I will also try again with the smaller drive. Thanks!

for the 120, which shows up in bios,
the error is this:
mkdosfs: failed whilst writing reserved sector
for the 30, which does NOT show up in BIOS,
it formatted the drive. Windows still can not install to the disk, It can see it though. I guess it doesn’t matter because if it’s not in the bios then it would never boot. What are the chances I have 2 bad hard drives? And I know for a fact that the 120 worked when I took it out of the ipod. Maybe I damaged it removing it. I just hate to shell out $ for a THIRD drive not knowing if it will work!

Hi, the 8GB SSD on my Acer Aspire One A110 died and I’m debating whether to replace it with another SSD or a 1.8″ HDD like the Samsung that tnkgrl used. I’m looking at this Transcend 16GB TS16GSSD10-M which I found on newegg for about $54.00. It looks like a drop in replacement for the Intel Z-P230. The thing I’m wondering about is transfer speeds. The datasheet for this SSD says it supports UDMA mode 5 which is 100 MB/sec. The datasheet however only shows benchmark data for UDMA4 mode with what looks like about 45MB/sec reads and 12MB/sec writes. I understand that the Intel Z-P320 maxed out at UDMA4 and it made me insane when firefox would lock up the whole system for multiple seconds reading / writing it’s sqlite database. Would I get a significant performance boost going with the Samsung HDD compared to the Transcend SSD? I don’t care about disk capacity as much as speed and durability.

My friend and I were recently talking about how we as human beings are so hooked onto electronics. Reading this post makes me think back to that debate we had, and just how inseparable from electronics we have all become.I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Ethical concerns aside… I just hope that as the price of memory decreases, the possibility of uploading our brains onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s a fantasy that I daydream about almost every day.(Submitted on R4Post for R4i Nintendo DS.)

Hi Tnkgrl.
I got a 1.8″ 80GB ZIF PATA HD Toshiba MK8009GAH. I successfully connected it to the laptop. then I tried to install windows 7 on my acer aspire one zg5. the windows 7 installation recognises the hard drive, but would not agree to install on the hard drive. because the laptop won’t agree to boot the hard drive at start up. Please, what can I do?

In response to the above question download active boot disc creator off the web its free transfer it to a usb drive to boot from. Then format ur new drive.

Btw I did the mod and it works great. If anyone needs a hitachi flip zif cable then send an email to doomsbuggy@aol.com and we could negotiate something if u got paypal. Its alot quicker than ordering from china

Hey, thanks for a good side. I purchased a samsung drive. Bios finds the disk. but when I try to instalere xp or linux. I get only up to ensure that it can not find the disk. I have reset bios. flash bios. tried EVERYTHING!

I bought the same Samsung HS06THB ( brand new ) as tnkgrl and got some ZIF cables off ebay which have blue on both sides and I’m having a murderous time getting the cable into the drive. I’m inserting with the blue towards the bottom of the drive with the cable pins towards the top / label. I seem to have gotten it in ( not sure if it’s in enough ) and the drive doesn’t spin up and isn’t recognized. Using bios 3114.

I can confirm that the MK3008GAL works. I used a flip cable and the hd was detected right away. I’m running Windows 7 ultimate on it right now. It is sort of unstable for me though. I get BSOD once a while out of nowhere. I’m not sure if its the hard drive or something else. I find that the cable must be folded so that there is not too much tension at the connectors. When you put the case back on, pressure on the cable and hard drive will cause problems. Just make sure everything is as stationary and rigid as possible.
If anyone know why I’m getting BSOD, I would appreciate an answer.

@ Saheb. I tried that many times with different cables. the BIOS doesn’t support the Laptop to boot the hard drive. It doesn’t even recognise that a hard drive has been connected. But when I start the windows 7 ultimate installation, the installation recognises that a hard drive has been connected, it even shows the name of the hard dirve toshiba MK8009GAH and can format the hard drive. but, when I click on the hard drive name for the installation to be done in it. I then get a message that my computer’s BIOS might not support booting with the toshiba hard drive. do you know what is causing the problem?
I am afraid to buy another hard drive, fearing that I might get the same problem

blazinhot06: can you take a picture of how u connected the cables. It may be that the hard drive is incompatible but I cannot prove that since the specs look ok. If you have another drive lying around i would recommend you try that, but it seems you would have tried that if you did. I had the problem you are having with the first drive I bought it was a 1.5 PATA. I resolved it by getting another drive. The Toshiba you have should work, the only reason I can think of is cabling.
If you read this whole page you will notice they most of them cabling issues.

Stupid question but did you turn off the device before taking out the cable to try different arrangements?

Yes. I always turn off the device before changing cable arrangements. My SSD still funstions perfectly with all the 3 cables I have. two of the cables are new and 1 came with the laptop. I think I would get a new 160gb samsung PATA hard drive. you think that would work?

TJL:
I’ve just ordered an adapter and SDHDC card to do just that :-)
I considered the iPod HDD option but prices of SD are so relatively cheap now and they’re lighter. 32GB should do me fine. After all, my entire Ubuntu 64bit desktop uses 24GB, which includes 15GB of personal files!
I’ll let you know if it works ok. Waiting on the 1gb RAM being delivered, thought I might as well do the lot ‘while I was in there’.

I did the upgrade with toshiba mk1231gal. It’s visible in bios but I can’t format it, windows doesn’t see it, in linux (ubuntu) I can format it with gparted only as fst but can’t make it bootable. Is there a solution to make it work?

Further to my attempt at fitting a ZIF to SD adapter and card in place of the SSD:
Sadly, this didn’t work. Perhaps it was the adapter, system or combination. I thought I had it sorted when the adapter showed both ‘5v’ and ‘SD’ LED’s lit. The bios didn’t pick it up at all. Not even a flicker from the ‘Active’ LED on the adapter. Booting from USB stick, the distro (#! CrunchBang Linux) didn’t see it either, though this was probably grasping at straws :-)
Ah well. At least the RAM went in flawlessly and whatever else, I may have an unuseable SD adapter but I still have a useable 32Gb SD card!

Hey guys…
I’ve also hot a Hitachi travelstar (30gb) that is not being recognized in the BIOS. I’ve tried a combination of flipping cables on the HD end, but the disk isn’t even spinning! This is my second one of these HD’s and I tested it and know it works. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Saheb:
The adapter has ZIF (40 pin) and mini IDE (50 pin). Or rather had. I removed the IDE for physical fit reasons. I have no mini IDE adapters, so would have had no way to try it anyway :-(
I’m resigned (for the moment) to being unable to make it work. However, I’d appreciate any thoughts as to another method:
Chain-loading GRUB to initially boot from the SSD, then the SD in the left-hand slot? Is this possible? I’ll also ask this on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix forums, the more pooled knowledge the better! Should it be possible, I’m assuming the data transfer from this slot with a Class 6 SD card is faster than the SSD? Obviously I’d permanently tie-up the left-hand SD slot and lose almost all of the 8Gb SSD but I can live with that. Most of my removable media is USB, anyhow.

Saheb:
Many, many thanks, I think this is almost exactly what I was looking for :-)
I’ve sort of skimmed it too (time pressure/work) but can see it will let me do as I proposed.
I’m going to play with it a bit. My desktop Ubuntu Karmic has let me use a spare 2Gb SD (via a USB reader) to write the Ubuntu Netbook Remix ISO, which boots on the Acer Aspire One (again, via a USB reader) just fine, so there’s a start. I have a few days off to go through the GRUB config as per the supplied link to make it work on my 32Gb SD in it’s left hand slot. I’m very confident this won’t be too much of a pain.
Thanks again!

Saheb:
Not so good. I can burn the ISO for the ‘live’ version and it boots just fine from a USB reader, running in ‘Live’ mode. When I come to install on the SD, I get errors ‘can’t create ext3 (or ext4) file sytem’. I need to have a good few spare hours to try and pre-format partitions on the SD card via my desktop. Maybe even install netbook remix on my desktop (spare partition or ‘Live’ CD) and from there to the SD card. Starting to wonder if the SD card is faulty.

@saheb
Yes, I have zif to lif and zif to zif. The drives are not even getting power. I’ve tried many cables. I also recently bought a cf card adapter, and the CF isn’t being recognized by my aao either. I’m thinking it’s a power problem. Maybe a short somewhere or something…

@Nicco I wish the was an easy to test the cables or Hard Drive to see if they are at fault but unfortunately there isn’t. Its more to do with Zif Drives not being popular enough yet. With the rise of SSD drives ZIF may completely die out. Well back to your problem, if your upto it you could get a Zif to 2.5 of 3.5 adapter and check to see if your drive(s) is(are) working.

I recently did this with an 80gb toshiba straight out of an iPod I had laying around re house. I had some trouble trying to slide the connector into the hard drive and read somebody had sanded down the blue tape so I gave it a try after finally getting it sanded down enough it fit :] locked the black thing down and hoped for the best. To my suprise it showed up in the bios first time so I grabbed my USB with ubuntu to format it with gparted but was stopped by the constant errors. Ubuntu shows that it is a healthy drive and I was able to read it and wipe the existing partions off but it’s almost like I can’t write to it because I can’t creat a new partition.

The only think I could thing of is maybe I damaged a part of the cable preventing from being able to write to the hard drive. For the record thedrive worked absolutely perfect when in the iPod so should not be fualty. I ordered another ribbon cable off of eBay to give a try. Any suggestions or anything would be freaking amazing!! Please give me some ideas :]

@Tori: can you post a pic of your sanded down cable, From what I understand the Toshiba and Hitachi are a tighter fit.

If you read the part where he/she sanded it down, you would have also read that it didn’t work for him/her. I also believe you fucked your cable, but you cable may still be feasible.

Try using the the sanded part on the mother board, when I squeezed my cable in to the drive I noticed some of the pins got bent backwards, you can use your nails to straighten them back to their place.

Hey well I later tried to reconnect to the ssd until my cables came in the mail but because I had sanded it it wouldn’t stay in. I grabbed some electrical tape and pit a small strip on and it worked like a charm. Everything works exactly like before. No problems with writing to the disk like I had with the toshiba hard drive. So I was really curious if I somehow screwed up the hard drive so I popped it back into the hardrive and plugged it in the the comp and reformatted it. It worked and I’m just using it as an external now.

So in the end everything works! Didn’t damage anything … The hard drive showed up in the bios and everything so it should be fully compatible but I guess that’s not the case. I’m gonna give it another try when the cables come in. This time with a fully formated hardrive without the seperate iPod firmware partition and stuff and maybe since the cable I’m getting is for specifically toshiba drives eveything will workout

My 30gb HD is now in full working order and my AAO runs like a charm.
All i needed was a FLIP CABLE, I didn’t want to buy one because it was such a hassle, but it is what did the trick. I recommend anyone who is trying to do this mod to buy the flip cable before anything, as it would have saved me around 3 months and 50 dollars worth of trouble.
Here is one for HDs with LIF:http://tinyurl.com/lifflipebay
And one for ZIF HDs:http://tinyurl.com/zifflipebay
Thanks again everyone, and especially you TNKGRL!!

I have successfully installed a 60 GB hdd, but upon trying to install the OS (XP ULCPC version) from the recovery CDs, I am able to boot from the usb cd-rom, and get to the point where I am asked for disc 1 that contains XP. It spins up, but never goes past 0% on the progress. The discs are marked “For NAND Flash module only”, which I assume is my issue. Where can I download the iso for the hard drive base AspireOne A150? Google is usually my friend, but has left me empty handed on this one…

I made the swap with an 80 gig ipod hard drive and it’s recognized in bios but when I try to reinstall windows it says that it can’t access this drive even though it’s listed. New cable from ebay and appeared to fit perfectly. Not sure what’s going on now. Any ideas?

Mike C said:
> Further to my attempt at fitting a ZIF to SD adapter
> and card in place of the SSD:
> Sadly, this didn’t work. Perhaps it was the adapter,
> system or combination. I thought I had it sorted when
> the adapter showed both ’5v’ and ‘SD’ LED’s lit. The
> bios didn’t pick it up at all. Not even a flicker from
> the ‘Active’ LED on the adapter.
Did you ever have any luck with this? I’m having a similar problem with my ZIF2CF adapter; the access LED (both the adapter’s and the computer’s) is always on, but the drive is not recognized by either BIOS or Kubuntu, and the reason I got the adapter in the first place is that the internal SSD has failed, so I don’t have the option of chain loading.

Criptych, what cable are you using? Mine only started to work once i used the flip cable. I also had the solid LED ‘active’ light. Once I got the flip cables, the light turned from solid to flickering, like the drive was actually being read. Hope this helps.

@Masoyi, Thanks for replying. Yes that’s exactly what the drive is. I got the cable on ebay that said it was for toshiba drives. Is that what you meant by genuine cable? I will price some samsung drives.

If it is the HDD did you try the above suggestions? I know it is a pain to read all of it but it is repeated question. Which Drive do you have? did you get the ZIP to LIF Cables? please provide more information.

Thanks so much for the video. I’ve been taking laptops apart for years, but the day before I was going away and needed this one to work it was very nice to actually see somebody doing it so I knew 100% it could be done.

A few points –

I used exactly the same hard drive family as you recommend – only 30gb was a shame, but it was all I could get on short notice. The speed improvement was simply huge although the battery is even worse now…

Don’t do what I did and peel the blue reinforcing tape off the ribbon cable – just gently work at it – you will get it in there.

i have an early acer one with 160gb hdd. i lost the c: partition using partition magic to format. now no drive letter shows for the drive in boot setup f12, but does show drive is present. i’m working with a usb cd drive which shows as a: . i want to install win xp. any help would be appreciated. thanks, bob

Hi! Pardon me if this is a dumb question, or has already been asked.. I broke the zif connector for the keyboard on my aspire which came with a 120gb hdd. If I buy one of the ssd aspires can I just swap my old hdd in and change some BIOS settings, or am I being too simple-minded about the whole thing… I’ve been looking for aspire mobos without much luck, so I’m kinda hoping buying the whole ssd machine and replacing the hd (being more careful this time) would be a workable alternative…. thanks!

As for the swap, kind of but you will need an adapter and it would be waste, Just replace the motherboard. I assume when you say SSD you mean the ZIF Drives and not the SATA Drives.
I am also assuming the 120GB drive is SATA.

Awesome tutorial, great videos! I think I can take my ZG5 apart and put it together again in the dark and without my glasses now. I’m unfortunately in the ranks of those who either damaged the cable (likely) or motherboard (unlikely) or have a bad hard drive (the packaging was very fishy – not quite what I’d expect from a distributor, just bubble wrap around a Toshiba MK6015GAA). Besides which I ordered a Samsung 1.8″ Samsung pata zif 60GB HS06THB (and the invoice also said that) but got the Toshiba (can’t find anything that says they are incompatible, but can’t find anything that says they are either. But hey, it’s an adventure and I’ll have more spare parts in my basement :-)

I wish there was a way to boot from a USB stick (probably no worse than the SSD) to test the rest of the ZG5 that would allow new apps to be added, tried BartPE but no luck yet with USB stick – don’t want to just use the BartPE DVD without being able to add programs.

I have new cables on the way (5cm, 10cm and Flips) also an external enclosure so I can test the drive I got and maybe use it later for the slowest external 8GB drive around with the SSD… I’ll post an update when done. Worst case, looks like the motherboards aren’t too expensive, and this has to work again because I bought the 12 hour battery with the new hard drive :-D

Ask Google for Puppylinux. Works perfectly on my AAO-ZG5, from a usb-stick. Light and fast.
So fast I now want to change my SSD-drive. I hoped to find a Pata-Zif-ssd but it seems they are expensive and still rather slow (http://www.dpieshop.com/runcore-32gb-18-zif-ide-ssd-for-standard-pc-5mm-height-solid-state-drive-p-692.html) while the same drive in SATA is cheaper and much faster.
So now I’m here to study how to put a HDD in my machine. Faster, sure, everything’s faster than the original thing. But (I saw this question before but nobody answered clearly) what does this HDD do to my battery life compared to the SSD?
Thanks to all for the useful information found here.

I bought and installed the 60 GB Samsung HS06THB. However, after about 3 months it died completely. Turns out that allot of these OEM drives sold on ebay carry zero manufacturer warranty, so if they die after the 60 days that some of the sellers give you you’re SOL. Both Samsung and Toshiba have the same policy on these OEM drives.

In any case I’m thinking about getting the Toshiba MK3008GAL since it’s cheap, but am wondering what issues are involved as someone above mentioned needing a “flip” cable or a ZIF to LIF cable… Any suggestions?

One piece of advice to people: once you get the drive recognized, boot into one of the Live Linux distros like Parted Magic and do these three things:

1. Turn on S.M.A.R.T monitoring
2. Run badblocks -vws /dev/sda to check the entire surface of the drive
3. Run a stress test tool like Bonnie++ for a day or two

Thanks, SailorBob! Good advice. Today I got my new Zif cables in the mail from Hong Kong, still waiting for the external PATA case to test the drive separately. Still doesn’t see the Toshiba MK6015GAA, tried both regular and flip cables (10mm – also got the 5mm while I was at it). The original 8GB SSD now works again with a new cable, so I guess the click I heard pushing the motherboard in was the hard drive hitting the plastic (phew). Tonight I noticed that the case on the new Toshiba is a little flaky, noticed that there was separation in a corner when it clicked in place – maybe I shouldn’t have gotten the cheapest one – it came wrapped poorly in bubble wrap with nothing else but the drive. More to follow when I find if it is good or not (hopefully before the 60 days). At least it’s back for now (using it to enter this) :-)

Thank you! Your tutorial helped me upgrade the Mini PCIe Atheros AR5BXB63 wireless card that came in my aspire one netbook to an Intel WiFi Link 4965AGN. It isn’t connecting at the full 300mbs, but is still over 100mbs and the 802.11n is only connected to the router at 100/t anyway, so twice as fast thanks to you. This PC is a ZG5 atom N270 has a 160 GB HD and sim reader already installed. Left to my own devices I kept removing the Mini PCIe card accessible from the back for the SIM reader. I couldn’t understand why the Atheros drivers wouldn’t uninstall (maybe b/c i was removing a totally different PCIe). The SIM reader is of no real benefit to me b/c I’m not savvy enough to put it to use w/o paying AT&T $ I’d rather have in hardware for projects like yours. Thanks again.

After three weeks of success, our aspire one is not working anymore. I don’t know what happened but i can’t turn it on with/without battery. Its fully charged, but when i press the power button, it’s just not turning on… :(
Did anyone of you have the same problem ever?

Update to my saga: I sadly warn all to not buy the drive from http://www.mini-laptop-accessories.com. I bought the first on the 16th of September 2010, received it from China a month later (but the wrong make and model, and did not appear to work). I bought an external PATA case to confirm it was defective. Returned it the 18th of October 2010, it is presumably lost in the mail somewhere between here and Shenzhen, China (now two months since returning it)… I just bought another Samsung drive, this time from the United Kingdom. Meanwhile I’m looking at my iPod like a hungry cannibal :-D

P.S. I did check with the original supplier last month, they said they had not received the return and asked for the U.S. Customs trakcing number. I e-mailed them again this month and have not received a reply. Given the shoddy packaging of the original shipment, that it was not the right drive and also defective I conclude that it was a bad purchase. If the seller resolves this I will post an update (and also have a use for the empty external PATA drive case I bought in the process) :-/

acer aspire one d250 1517-…..sry to bother you but i can’t find a straight answer no matter what i put in search……i have seen many pci-e ssd cards on ebay and elsewhere for other laptops…..my ?…are there ANY that i could put in the pci-e compartment on the bottom of the netbook generally referred to as being for a 3-g card ?…seems to me (stupid, most likely)…that pci-e is pci-e…and that there ought to be a way to get a 16 ,32, etc. to work in it…..thank you in advance for your time.-castawaydreamer at aol if anyone cares to reply directly

Hi Thanks for all these posts I bought a Samsung HS06THB
(60 GB) from ebay/China put it in the AA1 (cur some plastic and
used a zif cable from ebay thinner than original one…) the bios
V0.3109 that I had find it directly but when trying to install
Windows XP sweet, it founds 8 GB instead of 60 GB ! and couldn’t
format it W Seven found the right size but couldn’t format it…
errors… I flashed the AA1 bios to V0.3310 (last up2date), nothing
changed I tried booting on Ubuntu:http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/download on a USB, the OS
works fine from USB, but didn’t found the HDD :-( I also looked for
the low level tool from Samsung :http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html
create an .img disk image boot USB with (unetbootin-windows-312),
the ESTOOL founds a HDD but it says it is not a Samsung !!!! and
refuses to diagnose it :-(( I thing that I have to reopen the AA1
once again and try to put the cable more in the zif, like on one
commment :https://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/modding-the-acer-aspire-one-hard-drive/#comment-14673
any other ideas ? Thanks

multiboot :-) Seven and ubuntu notebook remix :-)
for the mod
what helped me are the pictures of how to open the ZIF connecter on the HDD and you must have a thin new zif cable.
Thanks to God, I had 2 cables from a previous attemp (buy but didn’t installed) CF to ZIF card which cames luckily from ebay with 2 cables :-)
lot of patience to all who want to do the mod
with 1.5 MB and real HDD, the running speed is there, now the AA1 is a computer !

Hi,
I have changed ssd to hs04thb and had problem with it.
first it wasn’t detected, then after few attempts of disconnecting it worked, but i couldn’t format it. mhdd erase and it wokred, win installed, but again there is a problem, blue screens, bios sometimes say it is HS_4_HB or sAmSuNg and there is a boot problem.
after many sites and a lot of reading I have found thathttp://www.ggi-international.com/en/products/membrane/connectors/zif.php
zif connector is so fragile, max 30 inserts, i think that i over do that amount. i have ordered 40 pin zif connectors and i hope it will work. i will write it when it is done. mhdd didn’t show any bad sectors, i have removed ram and it must work.
it will be done on thursday :)

I was working on mine again today, but trying something different – after one bad purchase (never got the right drive from mini-laptop-accessories, out $60 after return to China was lost) and a second purchase the Aspire won’t recognize the drive internally. I’ve been using it for a month or two by booting off an external SATA (100GB) USB drive, tried to use the external Samsung this way but the BIOS seem to have trouble with it (works sometimes on a warm boot – thr drive appears fine but the BIOS appears to have a problem recogizing it). The external SATA with two USB plugs is recognized by the second boot (hit F12 on first boot, and if not present Ctrl-Alt-Del and try again). I’ve attached the external case to the back of the monitor with industrial-strength Velcro… Not ideal, but it’s running and a hell of a lot better than the 8GB SSD it came with :-)
I wonder if some of these Aspires came with BIOS chips that just can’t detect the Samsung or the external PATA case …

ok, I have got my zif lif tape, I ordered TOSHIBA type with 2 blue sides and one with blue-white. It is not important if it is flipped or normal, because hdd can be flipped.

Installed blue-white , locked hdd connector and tape just got out of there, too thick.
Connected motherboard with blue one, so i could see blue end, placed hdd , so I could see connector and inserted (tough, but it clicked) blue end, so I could see silver stripes. mounted everything and it works after few tries (it is fragile and not tolerant to mistakes). now scanning entire hdd in windows on new samsung hs04thb.

I was trying the same thing: add hard disk space (the built-in one died. Not supposed to, but did).
Reading all these comments, I found that a Samsung Mini1 costs much less here (RM 160) versus a barebone drive with ZIF (RM 230). So I bought the Samsung Mini1 (200 GB) and attached it to one of the USBs, and installed Ubuntu Netbook. It is faster than the original one, boots nicely.
Next step: I opened the casing of the Samsung without too much damage (I’ll explain elsewhere how), and out came a nice hard disk with MicroUSB on the board.
Then I opened the casing, removed all stuff, including lid with screen, and dremeled away the 3 mounting holes for the flash, a little bit more on the inside of the 3G, and now the disk fits, with cable, either horizontally or vertically (I meanwith the USB to the right or to the top, extending into the 3G-opening.

First part done. Now I can run the Aspire from the “built-in” Samsung Mini1, but still with a cable extending out of the 3G-opening and taking 1 out of 3 USB-plugs. Ugly. Next I’ll try to solder the 4 wires to the board.
Now I don’t like to solder underneath the WiFi-adapter. There is another report, where the author solders to some pins in the 3G-compartment. Unfortunately, the pictures are not clear. Some tape hides totally the pins used.
Can anyone give me a hint, which pins are most conveniently accessible?

First of all thanks for the site, step by step with photos, cracking job!
Followed all the instructions, even bought new cables and an identical PATA drive. Mounted the drive reassambled the unit. Now it wont power up. I took it apart again, reassambled it and tried to power it up as I reattached each part. Powered up until I the board with the track pad onto the unit.
Any ideas what that’s about?! Why would screwing the board back on cause complete power failure?
any hints would help. thanks in advance
Dan

Thanks for the reply
I did ground myself frequently during the process and the machine does fire up with the trackpad ribbon inserted, soon as I put the screws in it fails to power up or even charge the battery.
Will look at it again tomorrow (had it in bits 3 times today!) and let you know how I get on.
PS when the power comes on (without the screws)the hard disc powers up too. I am having major issues with the bios, the acer flash guide was slightly vague and ended up (seemingly) wiping all the data from the chip, I’m waiting for a flash drive to try and address this. Will keep all you helpful people updated!
Dan

It just occurred to me that when I was first trying to install the Samsung internally (with many different ZIF cables, and tested the HD connection with an external case each time) the Acer seemed dead on at least one occasion. When I put the original SSD in it booted (and I called it a night, considering myself lucky I hadn’t killed it). Maybe there’s something bad about the cable connections on the motherboard side… if you remove the drive and either reinstall the original SSD or leave it out, attach an external drive via USB, then boot and F12 at the prompt, then give it the old Microsoft three fingered-salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) until at F12 the external drive shows up you may be able to run off a USB drive instead (using mine that way right now)…

Funny thing, even externally the Samsung has problems, it reports missing files (after two installs) after working once or twice. Instead I’m using a SATA externally (which takes TWO USB sockets instead of one-sigh) but it’s 100GB instead of 60, and the speed isn’t bad :-)

One of these days I might try to install again but I’m happy with the Velcro’ed hybrid I’ve got running now, still gets 5+ hours battery life with the larger battery…

its really wierd, had another crack this morning. trackpad board off, no probs, attached track cable, fine. clipped the board at the back by the battery, fine, down the left side fine. soon as the right clicks in it dies. my uneducated guess is something on that daughter board maybe? its the only thing on that side of the case.. i have 3 laptops in bits and 2 desktops on repair right now. get back to it later!

and the drive seems fine i can here it revving up and power is supplied.. im having boot issues with acers awesome flash utility. that seems to have wiped my bios, need to wait for a flash drive to arrive before i can see if the disc is even detected

Update!
Found the problem with my power issue and the trackpad plate issue. Locking the final latches down is apparantly pushing the motherboard down. Down so far that it is screwing with the battery. Not sure how or why this is as the board is now slightly raised above its original position. I’m going to measure the maximum distance between battery and power pins and mount some foam pads to give it some breathing room.
Hopefully my ‘acer approved’ flash drive will arrive tomorrow and I can see if the whole experiment has worked. This is my first forray into netbook modding.
Tell you all, I’m chuffed I figured out the nature of the problem!
Dan

Just wanted to say THANK YOU for this guide and all the comments. After frying my old Intel SSD somehow, I was sad to see my AA1 go – until I read this tutorial and all of the comments (took me a while but worth it!)
I’d taken my AA1 apart before to upgrade the ram so was confident about getting into it. The 60gb HDD you used was a big large for my needs so bought a 30gb Samsung HS030GB from Ebay for £30. Used the old ribbon cable, connected it up (cable upside down at the HDD end- only went in a little way but seemed sturdy) and it all worked first time! Installed Linux Mint from a USB and here I am now. Only been active for a few minutes but it’s all looking good. So happy I’m still using this machine and it’s even faster than when bought it. Result!

i have bought on ebay from china samsung HS06THB like on video clip http://qik.com/video/183950 from tnkgrl, i also flipped the cable upside down liko on video, blue tape on cable is above like on video when i inserted it to motherboard and other side of cable blue tape is down. Cable is labeled zif/lif 20624.

After i have connected the cable i powered up acer aoa110 and initialy i heard in 2 sec hdd but in BIOS 3109 is nothing. Please help what to do, i have ordered another zif cable for acer aspire one on ebay. I cant believe that the HDD is maybe damaged because it was well packed when it arrived.

Thanks for this mod. I was a bit scared to open up my AOA110 (first time to open a laptop/netbook for me), but the instructions were so clear I just went for it. And now I am happily installing Ubuntu netbook remix on the Samsung drive (same as in the mod).

Hi I got a s\hand toshiba 30Gb from Ebay and Im having problems with it, I think its failing. I want to fit a new hard drive to it, does anyone know what is the largest in GB’s 1.8″ PATA I can fit in it, I want to go for if poss. 120Gb’s

Hello tnkgrl. I just got my samsung HS06THB and installed it with the cable i found on ebay like you suggested. On the first he was recognized and i installed XP, all fine, working perfectly and super-fast. After a reboot it went suddenly nuts… now when i boot it, the bios won’t recognize the drive but if i enter the bios settings, reloading default settings and then reboot or even just entering and exiting the bios the drive is recognized… but i have to enter bios every time i boot! I tried removing battery and flashing the bios to 3309 but no use… obviously the old SSD with its original cable works like a charm. Any suggestion?

So I’ve read through most of the comments and It seems people are having quite a few problems getting these drives to work. So my question, of all the drives people are using, which one has the best chance of working? 60/80GB would be perfect.

I put in a Toshiba MKGal back in October 2010 and it’s been running fine since then. Then this evening I booted up and after about 30 or 40 seconds it shut down like someone had pulled the plug out of the wall. I rebooted and went to the boot selection menu and left it there and same thing. I did this a few times and every time it would just loose power after 30 seconds. It extremely consistent, and doesn’t matter whether I boot into Linux, or just go to the bios menu doing nothing – it just dies every time after almost exactly 30 seconds. It’s not hot and doesn’t exhibit any peculiar behavior, it just powers off after 30 seconds every… I’ve never seen anything like this, does anyone have any ideas?

I haven’t seen quite that with the Acer, but a Sony Vaio laptop I used to use went through a strange spell. First the display would scramble on occasion (I suspected the neighbor’s microwave). Then after a few weeks the display stopped working. I went with an external monitor. More things started failing, and I opened it up – a tiny little dust bunny was stuck on the BIOS pins (of course, that laptop was like a vacuum – no fan with the Acer). After removing it everything was like new. It could be a short caused by dust or something that isn’t quite where it should be…

Hi I want to install a http://www.amazon.com/Super-Talent-1-3-Inch-Aspire-FEM32GF13M/dp/B001H14G4M into a A150 for a friend and before I open it up and void the warranty id like to find out if its possible, basically replacing the current HDD with a SSD, I have replaced this SSD in a A110 with this exact one and worked a treat, now just wanna find out if its doable in a A150. Thanks guys and girls :)

Hi, re: Modding the Acer Aspire One hard drive tnkgrl Mobile. %ANCHOR_TEX%. I recently also had a fault on my laptop; sony vaio HDD is dead, fortunately got it fixed last Sunday at this place in harrow, easy to reach via the London Underground train. Get off at Harrow & Wealdstone station (on bakerloo line) and its ten minutes walk to the Laptop Repair Company. Good reliable service with warranty & affordable. Hope this helps. Nathan

I had the exact problem as Mark, and had to order some flip cables from eBay as well. I haven’t received them yet . Anyways, I’m sure this is what you’re looking for. Go to eBay and search for zif flip. You’ll find lots. I got the 3 pack 5cm, a 3 pack 10cm, and a 3 pack of original.apple desktop repair

It reminds me of the same small thing I found when I installed the drone, the connector. It’s really amazing, it supports battery wiring to connect to more power, smaller size, stronger, and more reliable terminals. Because the battery not only has a power interface, but also has a data communication interface, the connector helps and supports power and signal contact to ensure that the circuit is fully discharged.
The connector I am using is from Shenzhen Hongru. (https://www.hrb-connector.com/board-to-board-connector.html)